Oral Histories

Robert Franklin is the assistant director of the Hanford History Project. In this role, he is the archivist and oral historian for the Department of Energy’s Hanford Collection and Washington State University’s collections on Hanford. He attended Washington State University in Pullman and earned his Master’s degree in history. In graduate school, he took a graduate-level seminar on the Hanford oral history project, which sparked his interest in Hanford and the impacts of the Manhattan Project on the rural, agricultural communities in Washington. In this interview, Franklin discusses the general history of Hanford, displacement of Hanford area residents during the Manhattan Project, and current efforts to preserve the site. He also describes some of the pre-Manhattan Project properties that can be visited today, including the White Bluffs Bank.

Vincent (“Bud”) Whitehead was a counterintelligence officer at Hanford during the Manhattan Project; his wife Clare was a secretary and a member of the Women’s Army Corps. In part two of their interview with S. L. Sanger, the Whiteheads discuss crime at Hanford and the project’s intense secrecy. Clare recalls when she was stricken with polio and how the DuPont doctors were far superior to the Army doctor. The couple also speculates on whether Bud’s subsequent health issues are related to radiation exposure. Finally, Bud recalls chasing and bringing down a Japanese balloon bomb.

Walt Grisham grew up on a farm at Hanford in the 1930s. He was serving in the Air Force in England during World War II when his parents were informed that they would need to leave the farm – the site was being requisitioned for the Manhattan Project. Grisham recalls what life was like growing up on a farm during the Great Depression. He remembers picking fruit at the orchards, how neighbor helped neighbor, and the challenges of getting the fruit and produce to market. He talks about what the area and the Columbia River continues to mean to the people who were kicked off the land. He explains the history of Hanford and White Bluffs, and recalls walking across the Columbia River one winter when it was frozen solid.

Paula and Ludwig Bruggemann were born outside of Yakima, Washington in the agricultural community of White Bluffs. Their father owned a prosperous fruit farm in White Bluffs along the Columbia River before the U.S. government forced the family in 1943 to relocate from the area to make way for construction of the Hanford Site. In this interview, the Bruggemanns discuss their brief years in White Bluffs, family history, the ranch, and the years that followed their displacement from White Bluffs. They recall what life on the ranch was like, and the sort of amenities their home had.

Oklahoma-born Leon Overstreet went into construction in 1941 after he learned a little pipefitting with American Can in Kansas City. He retired in 1979 after helping build the Fast Flux Test Facility and Washington Public Power Supply System No. 2, both at Hanford. During the interview at his Richland residence, he was especially amused by his recollection of an outhouse scrawl he read at Hanford in 1944. “Come on you Okies/Let’s take Japan/We took California/And never lost a man.” In this interview, Leon Overstreet talks about how he got involved at the Manhattan Project at Hanford. He discusses working conditions, the process of building the barracks and reactors and some project accidents. He also goes into his career in pipefitting after the war.

Robert “Bob” Bubenzer was supervisor of Hanford plant protection for DuPont from 1943 until early 1945. Though he helped maintain order in Hanford, he said that he “got no pleasure in putting people in prison.” After the war, he worked in the construction industry in the Midwest. In this interview, Bubenzer recalls what it was like to work as a patrolman for DuPont.